X-Men #94 - The New X-Men begin!
In September of 1963 a cast of characters like no other hit the American news stands. Created by artist Jack Kirby and writer Stan Lee, the X-Men were a team of super mutants in a world that was not ready to warm up to their presence. In the interest of proving human society wrong and schooling these young mutants, a man by the name of Professor Xavier turned his Westchester, New York mansion into a school, simultaneously created a safe place for the mutants to not only learn, but to hone their skills toward the pursuit of doing good. As these mutants had an “X-gene”, they were dubbed the X-Men by Xavier. This “X-gene” was a gene which regular humans did not have and wich also gave the X-Men – and other mutants good and evil – their special abilities.
While the series experienced initial success, the popularity of the X-Men had waned enough to result in reprints of the issue being issued from around 1970 to 1975. In the spring of 1975, that all changed with the publication of Giant-Size X-Men #1 – in which Xavier enlists mutants from around the world to rescue the X-Men. Finally, with a new cast of characters and new interest, the regular series was ready for a new launch. This is why X-Men #94 is such an important issue to fans and collectors. It is the first issue in which new material was released – this time with a new cast of characters. In this issue, the old characters such as Iceman and The Beast quit – and brand new (and arguably more interesting) characters are introduced. Save Cyclops – who remained on the team – the X-Men were now made up of Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Storm and Colossus. A character by the name of Sunfire makes a decision to return to Japan – and in X-Men #95 a X-Men by the name of Thunderbird dies. The creative talents of Chris Claremont, Len Wein, Dave Cockrum, Bob McCleod, Phil Rachelson and Tom Orzechowski made certain the characters would find their way to readers hearts – and the series was reborn in a major way.
Because of this success, XMen 94 has become one of the most valuable comic books from the 1970′s – or Bronze Age of comic books. According to GPAnalysis, a website which tracks CGC graded copies of the book, the most ever paid for a copy of X-Men 94 was $29,589 for a 9.8 graded copy of the issue in February of 2010. The value has dropped significantly since then – and a recent price paid for a book in the same grade was around $12,500. The book is valuable in any grade, however, and even poor condition copies fetch $50 to $100 a pop. A counterfeit copy of X-Men #94 even sold for $160 – but this site strongly condemns the production of counterfeit comics for obvious reasons.